Who is responsible for a cut cable?

As a customer or contractor doing excavation and remodeling work in our area we want you to be aware of the exuberant costs involved in a cut cable.  Striking a single line can cause injury, repair costs, fines and inconvenient outages for you and others. Every digging project, no matter how large or small, warrants a call to 811, Diggers Hotline. 811 is a free service to locate underground communication lines. At all times, whenever you are working around cables make sure you hand dig to expose.

Damaged and cut underground lines and cables can disrupt service to you and hundreds of customers.  Just a reminder that a cable or line that is cut or damaged, whether on your property or elsewhere, will be repaired or replaced to facilitate transmission of data, video and voice and be charged and billed to those responsible for the property damage.  The cable in the ground is the property of Lakeland Communications and when you cut it, you are damaging our property.  A cut cable is not only damage to our property, it also compromises our network.  That cable, unless completely re-plowed, will never be the same.  This can be very expensive, especially now with fiber optic cables in the ground.

A cut cable does not only disrupt your service and the network, it also disrupts our schedules and resources.  We have to dispatch technicians away from their current job serving other customers to temporary a line or splice the cut. We experience equipment costs, truck expenses, testing and repair costs. Many times, this takes two or more visits to your premise.  Often it takes more than one technician to help prepare, splice and bury a line. In many cases we need to hire a construction firm to bury a brand-new line or repair damages. These are significant services we do not get for free. Wisconsin law addresses the cost responsibility very clearly and it should not be a burden to a communications property owner or other customers of Lakeland to absorb. Costs are incurred for contractors, technicians, locator service to mark the site along with administrative time. In fact, we have found that the expenses incurred by us, at times do not even come close to what we are billing out to responsible parties.  In the end, whoever cuts a cable or line is responsible for the cut and responsible for damage to our property.